You might be surprised to know that a lot of couples deal with an affair at some point in their relationship, and it’s really hard. Sometimes divorce is an understandable reaction, but when the offending partner is able to feel and show deep remorse and empathy, there is lots of hope. When there are kids in the picture and years of history and positive connection within the relationship, it can be really worth putting in the sincere and hard work that it takes to recover.

There are phases of what the injured partner will be feeling: disbelief, anger, betrayal, a feeling of complete distrust, renewed hope, as well as ‘I don’t know how I will ever recover from this’. These are all understandable and normal reactions to this kind of shock and betrayal. You can feel completely blind-sighted, like you can never trust the person you thought you could trust again. Like your world has just been turned upside down.

You think, 'even if my partner is apologizing and taking responsibility, how do I know this won’t happen again in six months? How could the person I thought I knew so well lie to me?'

These thoughts are normal but hard to reckon with at first. It’s like - this just doesn’t make sense, and it’s hard to organize in the brain and heart.

There are things that can be done. One is working through the intense hurt and sense of complete betrayal that you are feeling together with your partner. I know that sounds crazy, but research shows that if your partner is wiling to do what it takes to mend what has been broken, he or she being available to listen, empathize, be with you in your pain, your sense of connection and trust can heal.

Research shows that empathy and emotional connection are the key to healing betrayal.

In order for that to happen, the partner who had the affair has to be wiling to listen completely and often while putting aside explanations and defensiveness. There often need to be countless rounds of listening to the hurt partner’s justified rage, despair, sadness, and distrust.

The hurt partner also has a task - he or she has to be willing to come out of the licking wounds alone phase, and to vulnerably share how bad it feels, how horrible and awful it feels to be betrayed that way.

The listening partner needs to not only listen, but be able to reflect and empathize, to allow him or herself to be moved by the hurt partner’s emotional experience and show the inevitable regret and remorse.

This scenario needs to happen repeatedly and often.

When you are feeling listened to and joined in your pain, you will feel less alone and like something is healing, something is changing. This can take a long time. As annoying as this sounds, this kind of life-changing situation can be an opportunity. A chance to reconnect at a level sometimes never experienced between the you, a closeness maybe you have rarely felt before. It is also a chance to pay attention to what was wrong before the affair.

After the healing begins and a sense fragile trust begins to come back, it’s important to heal underlying patterns that led to this imbalance in the first place. The affair was a symptom of a sense of disconnection between you, the negative pattern that was driving you both apart. This is an opportunity to heal that negative cycle, to find a way to come closer and be able to talk to each other in ways usually not experienced in a long time, if ever before.

Do you ever feel like you're living with a stranger rather than the person you married? Or like you are fighting an endless battle over nothing in particular with increasing disconnection?

I promise that you are not alone - those feelings come up for many people in long-term relationships and marriage. We try to talk about the stuff in life that needs to be ironed out - content like finances, kids, or extended family, but we get derailed not because of the subject matter, but because of the feelings that come up underneath.

It's normal to go through phases of feeling like you can't connect - where everything feels like an effort.

The truth is, most of us can get into 'negative cycles' in our relationships that are exacerbated during stressful times. By negative I mean that we begin to misread each other, make assumptions based on the body language or tone of the other, and end up feeling unsafe and shut down as a result.

We sometimes create just what we don't want, increasing disconnection. This is because we can begin to experience our partner as a scary tiger based on what we see on the surface. Ironically, we are often surprised to find out what is happening for our partner underneath: their unspoken fears, hurts, and misunderstandings. So we react - based on what we initially see as a growling tiger, without seeing the scared bunny rabbit underneath.

The goal is to learn to talk with each other from the bunny place, the place that is soft and vulnerable. The catch is that you need to feel safe enough to dare to do that. Ironically, the closer you feel with your partner, even though it can feel scary, the safer you actually are.

We tend to create disconnection and hardened defenses (anger and withdrawal) in order to feel safe, but it actually makes us feel more alone and less resilient. It also feeds the 'negative cycle'.

Coming to know that cycle like a team investigating a phenomena, working together to understand and defeat it, is a bonding experience in itself. The immediate result is that we tend to feel more bonded and supported, with a common goal. The more transparent and safe we feel, the less assumptions we tend to make about the other. Starting to see the world through our partner's eyes and thereby daring to give them the benefit of the doubt.

From there the results are plentiful: we can find our way back to one-another more easily and swiftly. This closeness and safety inevitably brings with it less effort in communicating, and most importantly, a secure and lasting connection.

​"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked" -Kahlil Gibran

​Have you ever wondered why most young children are joyful most of the time and observed how quickly they move through emotions like sadness and anger? Without intending to, they are able, just naturally, to access deep feelings, move through them, and continue on their merry way - feeling good with the world and generally happy with themselves.

When we get older, we begin to do something unnatural to us without really intending to. We get rid of bad feelings by stuffing them down with the idea that we need to appear (mainly to ourselves) happy and 'together'. This can leave emotions festering that we didn’t know existed. They often take the face of anxiety, depression, or just a feeling of emptiness. We come to believe that there’s something wrong with not feeling fine all the time.

When emotions get stuffed down, they tend to pop up unexpectedly when they reach a boiling point. This can feel out of control, sudden, and just plain unmanageable. Because of the quick fixes that we have come to expect, we look for something that can cap the unpredictable emotions when they show up. We self-medicate in the form of subtle and not so subtle addictions - too much exercise, over-eating, under-eating, alcohol, pot, and so many others.

Usually the quick fix doesn’t work for more than a short time because it’s like putting a band-aid on an infection. You can’t see it but it’s not healing and the pain gets worse. It needs to be healed from the inside-out.

The upside - and there is a big one - is that facing the ‘unhappy’ feelings will ultimately lead to real, true, and lasting joy. So there’s a paradox here - you have to face the darker stuff in order to truly let the sun in. ‘I’m fine’ isn’t close to as good as it can get. Facing uncomfortable and sometimes even traumatic feelings is what frees us to be truly content as well as connected with others - not feeling isolated and separate from ourselves and others.

I’m not talking about wallowing endlessly in grief and despair. That would be torturous! No, I’m suggesting that touching down into the well of feelings we’ve been holding deep inside can be healing. As an added bonus, this can give us access to a real sense of joy and contentment.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”-RumiThis is one of the refrains we can get caught in as couples. ‘If he would only be more empathetic and listen more, then I could feel more loved and want to be more intimate.’ ‘If only she would stop demanding stuff of me, appreciate me more, then I could be more empathetic, I would do anything for her if she just seemed happier with me.’Each partner’s position re-enforces the other’s protest and the whole thing ends up snowballing to where we can be in lock-down mode, not really understanding how we got there in the first place. The reason is that it all happens so fast - the cascading and largely automatic hurts (hurt because I don’t feel understood or empathized with - does he even love me?), that go to anger or distance and withdrawal (hurt because she doesn’t appreciate me, I try my best but she just can’t see it).While it’s true that things would be way more simple if other people were easier to deal with and more insightful or even could read our minds just sometimes. This isn’t the reality and probably for good reason - we are being challenged in our lives, and it’s not meant to be easy! And it certainly is true (especially in the Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy world), that both partners are contributing to a dynamic that is called a cycle, that happens to take over all reason and feeds off of each partner’s heightened reaction to the other partner’s reactivity. Hurt builds below the surface (as described earlier) and each partner unwittingly re-enforces the other’s worst fears.How to change yourself when you’re in the middle of that kind of a pickle? It’s hard hard work and you deserve a special award if you are doing it because most of us are wired to first blame the other. Why? Because it saves us from our own vulnerable, scary, deep, hidden feelings. It allows us to keep inside of our shells, in attack / defend mode, behind the medieval wall of fear with our spear ready to shove through the peep hole. So ‘changing’ yourself is not writing down a list of problems or issues or failings that you have and then bashing yourself over the head with it. It’s taking the feeling bull by the horns - the scary one - yes, going deep into those feelings that you are maybe barricading yourself from - there might be feelings of shame, fear you are not loved, fears that you are inadequate and will be abandoned. Those are the really deep ones, and therefore the scary, hard ones to feel. In a way it sounds simple - if we could communicate from that vulnerable place with our partner then they would hear us and be much better able to provide what we are asking from them. Part of us may be afraid they will back away in horror from our raw feelings. Part of us may not be aware of these deeper feelings brewing beneath the surface in ourselves. The revealing of yourself is the real courageous act, the real way to ‘change’ yourself, the real way to reach your partner’s heart, not his or her defenses.

The Blame-Avoid Cycle is an offshoot of the distanced-pursuer dynamic that is common in partnerships. The pursuer tends to blame while the avoider evades being blamed by withdrawing. Without being checked, these cycles can snowball and rigidify, each person setting off the other while strengthening their respective positions. Say Brian has a habit of blaming and criticizing Susan, she will feel hurt and angry from his constant attacks. Susan will probably go into her shell, avoiding him in order to get away from the blame. But Brian participates in the blame cycle because he covers up his more vulnerable feelings by criticizing her. Underneath the blame, he has likely been feeling neglected by Susan for some time now. He probably feels alone, frustrated, and rejected by her withdrawal.So which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Neither - each partner's participation in the dynamic feeds off the other, creating a balanced, but steady intensification of the cycle. There are plenty of assumptions at play here. Brian believes that Susan's withdrawal is rejection; he may wonder if she loves or finds him attractive anymore. Susan, on the other hand, feels bewildered, confused, and helpless because it seems that whatever she does is not enough. In her mind, she gets criticized and attacked no matter what. She avoids Brian further because she doesn't know how to make him happy.

Gaining understanding of the feelings beneath each partner's reactions can soften respective positions. This creates more empathy, less reactivity, and ultimately a turn-around of the negative cycle. Once the cycle softens, there is room for awareness and self-responsibility. For example, by listening to his/her partner's feelings, the blamer begins to realize that the avoider actually just feels helpless and afraid - attack is actually part of what is driving him or her away. The avoider understands that the blamer is actually just craving contact and validation, that he or she longs for connection but is expressing it poorly. This begins to shift the position of the avoider, who can begin to take risks by being more open and assertive. This is an obvious but initially scary way of making clear contact with the pursuer. From this, trust has a chance to build - the pursuer blames less because there is more contact from the avoider who is now speaking up more. Positive cycles begin to form and the relationship regenerates trust and connection once again.

Insight meditation - the type that has it's roots in Buddhism - has recently become well-known in the Western mainstream. It is recognized mainly as an empirically backed stress-reduction technique, but it is so much more than that. Not only is relaxation and less stress a side effect of mediating, but it can help to slow down repetitive thoughts enough to understand and gain some necessary distance from them. The basic message of insight meditation is: 'allow whatever arises, don't push it away or try to hold onto it, simply nod to it like you would to someone you are used to passing on the street.' The reality is that we are accustomed to have many thoughts that are repetitive, some can be debilitating and negative. The ability to slow down those thoughts and question their validity is a basic tenet of both insight meditation as well as aspects of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

The practice of insight meditation is to allow whatever experience is there to pass through your awareness, or even hang out for a bit if it wants to. Simply noticing these thoughts and feelings leads you to begin to understand yourself a whole lot better. It helps to develop the capacity to gain some objectivity by witnessing the thoughts and thereby choosing which you would like to cultivate and believe, and which you would rather set aside. To understand your thoughts for what they are means that you begin to know them - often swirling judgements, plans, memories, fears, etc, going around and around. When we are "identified" with those thoughts, whatever they are, we naturally believe them. So if you have a recurring judgement about yourself or a chronic expectation of yourself in relationship to others, then you naturally believe it without even noticing that the thought occurred. You end up feeling sad or scared, without understanding that the feeling most likely came from a negative, judgmental, or worrisome thought.

When you start to slow down the process of thought and become more of an objective observer of it, then you can begin to see that your thoughts don't define you. They are often not even based on reality, but are just subtle messages that you may have picked up from relatives, teachers, friends, etc. When you begin to separate from the thoughts and gain some objectivity, you realize that the resulting feelings also change. In other words, why be sad, fearful, or depressed when you are not believing negative thoughts about yourself? Insight meditation can help you to become your own therapist by learning to gain more awareness and thereby control over your mind. What a relief!

When Sarah first met Jonah, they fell in love easily and quickly. They were married within a year, and both felt very lucky and happy. They were together as much as possible, often neglecting other friendships and family. About a year into the relationship, they started to argue increasingly. Both felt confused and upset by their arguments. Wasn't this relationship supposed to be "the one", and if so, did fighting mean that they were somehow not meant for each-other, that they had been deluding themselves? My answer to that is no. They were not deluding themselves, but there were some important things happening that needed to be addressed and integrated into their marriage. First of all - no marriage is perfect. Many couples disagree, argue, and even fight regularly. Other couples are conflict averse, and become withdrawn when they are upset rather than argue. Then there are couples where one wants to work it out and process the disagreement, where the other prefers to run in the other direction. This usually triggers the first person to pursue, which activates the other to withdraw more because disagreement can feel threatening. In all relationships, as in children, there are developmental stages. When you first come together, there is an intense bonding and sense of love and attachment, a deep sense of merging. The next developmental stage is the search for separation and differentiation that the relationship can contain and withstand. In many couples, this particular stage can cause problems both because it is simply a new stage, and because it can be scary. What often happens is that partners try to hang onto the merging that is a natural stage early in the relationship but cannot be sustained. The need to become more separate can feel threatening, so some couples, though they resist it, end up creating differentiation through conflict. Paradoxically, the tendency to hang onto a sense of merging makes true intimacy difficult because each partner has trouble seeing the other in a real, three-dimensional way. The task at this stage in the relationship is to work on separateness in a healthy way. Accepting and celebrating your partner's differences. When you begin to recognize your partner's individuality and realize a sense of safety and space, the intimacy between you will increase. I'm not talking about the kind of separateness where you are withdrawing from each-other due to past hurt and resentment. I'm referring to an internal and healthy differentiation. A feeling that recognizes your partner as someone with completely different thoughts and motivations. The increase in intimacy comes from a more realistic view of your partner, a stronger sense of yourself within the relationship, and a feeling of safety within that.

Most of us have a little voice inside that talks us through the day. We often don't take note of what it's saying because we are so used to it that we no longer notice that it's there. Often when people are struggling with unexplained sadness, depression, or anxiety, the inner voice is quietly wreaking havoc.

The basic element of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a popular solution focused therapeutic approach, is that our thoughts can run our lives and in order to turn them around, we first need to bring them into sharper focus. We can begin by slowing these thoughts down by paying attention, in order to notice what they are saying. Through this, we can watch where they lead us. Often, negative thoughts can lead to painful emotions. In practice, we may notice and feel the emotions first, but the thoughts that led to them happened so quickly that they may have been missed.

A typical example of negative thinking leading to negative emotion is this - You leave work to have lunch alone and you suddenly realize that you are feeling a little blue and slightly tired. Sitting down to slow down what just happened and asking yourself where those feelings came from, you realize that you were just having an internal dialogue that went something like this: "I didn't get that project completed, I'm so disorganized...my colleague thinks I'm lazy and doesn't like me...now I am eating lunch alone again...nobody likes me..."

From this example, it's pretty understandable why this person would be feeling not only blue, but pretty discouraged during lunch. In that short amount of time, several thoughts have passed through that have become habitual and the emotions that follow are unwelcome but, most likely, quite typical.

The object of CBT is first to become aware of the thoughts that led to the emotions by paying attention and slowing them down. Second, once those thoughts have really started coming fully into awareness, they can be changed, reprogrammed in a sense. Often these negative thoughts come from our early years, where we internalized the sometimes judgmental voices around us, be it in school, community, or at home. It is helpful to understand this, but the real work is in the moment. In becoming aware of and learning to distance from negative thoughts while replacing them with positive, nurturing ones.

The process of recognizing and then replacing negative thinking is a profound, exciting, and wonderful process. It allows us to have much more control of our lives by holding a key to what makes us tick.

One of the most common couples dynamics that I see is the distancer-pursuer dynamic. What happens here is that one person regularly withdraws, while the other becomes demanding and angry as a result. This behavior then makes the first continue to withdraw, and thus the cycle continues. Usually, within the couple, each blames the other for this problem. The dynamics of who takes on each role can be fixed, or change places depending on how ingrained the pattern is.

The distancer or 'withdrawn' member of the duo feels the need to be separate and avoid connection because the other is 'too demanding', 'angry', 'nagging', etc. Even if the 'withdrawn' partner wants to connect, his or her attempts feel wooden because all the distancer can think of is how to avoid being suffocated with demands or barraged with blame. It is painful because the distancer may feel immobilized and full of guilt while not having a clue how to change this polarizing dynamic. It is understandable that the withdrawing partner feels the need to retreat from his or her partner's demands and growing anger - it can feel threatening, engulfing, and intimidating.

The typical 'pursuer' is bewildered and angry that his or her partner is emotionally unavailable. The pursuer feels left out, abandoned, and misunderstood. He hopes that his demands will eventually result in more contact with the distant partner. The only problem is that these exact efforts result in the distancer increasing his or her position and the polarity between the two increasing. The pursuer will often blame the other, arguing that pursuing is the only logical response because of the rejecting nature of the distancer. The feelings of rejection, abandonment, and the resulting emptiness brought on by withdrawal are powerful and painful, and it's understandable the pursuer will do anything to put an end to experiencing them.

What this leaves us with is a dynamic that both partners have created and continue to enact. The pursuer makes demands as a result of feeling rejected and abandoned; the distancer withdraws to avoid angry outbursts or demands made by the pursuer.

Since you can't change your partner or anybody else, you may feel a little desperate, continually trying to get your partner to be different. You may think: 'if only he would change, even admit to his part, I could change mine'. Even if it seems completely counter-intuitive, recognizing and taking responsibility for how you (not just your partner) behave is ultimately a relief. This is because it gives you some control over what is happening and what can be shifted in the relationship. By recognizing the negative cycles that you as a couple are setting up, you can understand what your part is in maintaining it, while gaining compassion for both you and your partner. You are trying your best - and ultimately want to feel happy and fulfilled in your relationship. By taking responsibility for your part, you have the power to begin to turn things around through awareness, which can result in effective behavioral adjustments.

This understanding and change of habit can have a big impact because it allows you to be the master of yourself by adjusting your end of the dynamic. And here's the secret - once your end begins to shift, whether your partner wanted to or not, his or her end will need to change without you having to do or say anything to get it to happen. This is because once one part of a system has shifted, the other must adjust in order to remain a part of that system. Your relationship is that system and your partner may not be aware of it, but once you stop focusing on him or her, and start changing your approach, the entire relationship will naturally begin to get back on track.

Couples are complex and unique in the way that they function and what roles partners take on. Traditional couples therapy has generally focused on the Freudian model of how childhood issues affect each partner in the relationship. This methodology can be time-consuming, while leaving less room for the couple’s interactions based in the reality of every-day life. When partners seek counseling, it is not only more effective, but more alive to focus on real-time discussion during therapy. As a result, each person in the relationship can express the nature of their needs and grievances while learning to listen to and understand the other. These may have been suppressed due to fear of conflict or other concerns. Couples can learn to become increasingly honest with one-another – this in itself creates intimacy and trust when done in the safe space of therapy. In other words, the therapist acts as a catalyst to careful discovery and real-time expression of subjects that may be unresolved in the relationship. This doesn’t mean that childhood issues are never included. However, what is happening in the present time, how and why thoughts and feelings are not expressed, and assumptions made by each partner can often more efficiently be worked with in the present. Because people are so unique, couples have their own dynamics that are best understood as their style of communication unfolds. These interactions are full of interest, life, and patterns to be understood and shifted. The focus on getting things done in therapy is often a relief to people, as it doesn’t need to take years to make lasting changes in communication and intimacy. This approach can be extremely effective, especially for highly motivated couples who are willing to look deeply and honestly at patterns and communication styles that may be hampering intimacy.